Get into the winter spirit season with Shivering Stone, an ice block pushing puzzle game.  You know how in some Zelda dungeons, you have to push sliding ice blocks into places and figure out where they should go?  Well this whole game is just that.  It’s available on all current consoles and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.

There are 50 levels in all, and in each one, you move your bundled up character with the control stick or D-pad and press the button to push ice blocks.  They will slide until they hit the snow border or another ice block, and you must figure out how to get them to certain spots on the playfield.  When you do that, you can exit via a gate and start the next stage.  If you mess up or get stuck, you can always start the level over by pressing the triangle button.

Unfortunately, this game has many problems, both minor and major.  It gets really tough early on, and a hint feature would’ve been nice, or maybe at least an option to reverse moves instead of having to start all the way over.  Your character also walks around REALLY slow, like, 8-bit RPG slow.  And finally, the game is pretty buggy.  It wouldn’t record trophy achievements sometimes and if you push blocks and they didn’t line up quite right for some reason, you couldn’t push them again even though it looked like you clearly could.  I wouldn’t think it would be possible in this day and age to mess up such a basic block pushing game concept, but they sure did here.

Kid Factor:

Nothing violent or objectionable here.  Reading skill is helpful for some of the menu text, but not necessary just to play.  Younger gamers will probably need help with the tougher puzzles, though.  Shivering Stone is rated E for Everyone.

Tags: Game Reviews